1 NEW: post-hackathon report

2 About

Come and spend a weekend in Cambridge hacking Haskell code in great surroundings with fantastic company! Haskell Hackathons are a tradition where everyone is welcome; we get together, work on projects with others or just do your own thing, the overall goal being to improve the Haskell ecosystem.

CamHac will be held from 12-14 August 2011, at Homerton College in Cambridge. As with previous Hackathons, all are welcome -- you do not have to be a Haskell guru. All you need is a basic knowledge of Haskell, a willingness to learn, and a project you're excited to help with (or a project of your own to work on).

3 Registration

We are full, sorry! All 72 places are currently allocated.

We do have a waiting list, which we will use to allocate places if people drop out. If you would like to be added to it, please email msrcevnt@microsoft.com stating that you would like to be added to the waiting list for the "Haskell Hackathon", with the following information

Full name:
Which days you are attending on:
day 1: yes/no
day 2: yes/no
day 3: yes/no
Dietary requirements:

4 Venue

0900: arrive any time from 9am, coffee and snacks will be available until 1000. Make sure you pick up your name badge and wifi details from the registration desk on arrival.

1045: break (coffee/tea, biscuits)

1230: lunch

1500: break (coffee/tea, cake)

1730: finish (we might be able to extend this a little if necessary)

There will be WiFi access, you will be given details when you arrive. We've been told that extra WiFi has been installed in the meeting room for us.

There will be a projector for giving talks/demos. We will probably reserve a part of the time for talks and demos.

5 Food

Tea and coffee will be supplied. We will have to go out to find lunch, but there are various places to eat and buy food at the Cambridge Leisure Park a few minutes walk towards Cambridge town centre. In the evening we will probably head towards the town where there are plenty of good restaurants.

We have been advised that only food provided by or purchased from Homerton College can be consumed on the premises.

6 Local arrangements

6.1 Getting to Cambridge

6.1.1 By Plane

Stansted Airport: Stansted is the nearest of the London-area airports to Cambridge. It is mostly served by flights to and from mainland Europe, Ireland, and elsewhere in the UK. By train it is about 30 minutes to Cambridge, bus about 1 hour.

Heathrow Airport: Heathrow is the principal London-area airport and one of the busiest in Europe with a wide range of national, European, and international services. By train it is about 1h30 to 2h to Cambridge (Heathrow Express is faster but more expensive).

Gatwick Airport: Gatwick is the second "London" airport with a wide range of national, European and international services. By train it is about 2h to Cambridge.

6.1.2 Trains from London

London has two train lines into Cambridge, London Kings Cross and London Liverpool Street. There is a regular service on both lines and duration is under an hour on the direct trains. Go to National Rail to check train times.

You can usually buy tickets at the station both at a ticket machine or a staffed counter. You usually will not be able to buy tickets on the train without paying a fine. Tickets can be cheaper if you buy off-peak and return trip. Off-peak tickets are usually valid on weekends and after 10 a.m. on weekdays. Make sure, though, to check National Rail for which trains are eligible for off-peak tickets.

Writing a library that implements the ideas of Typing Haskell In Haskell to type-check, say, a haskell-src-exts AST (Ben Millwood, Stijn van Drongelen)

I've been advised that THIH is actually quite old, and I might want to find a different base to work from. Any input appreciated. --Ben

Use a constraint-based approach, like the monadic constraint library that was presented at Anglohaskell the other year. Much more pleasant. --Philippa

Since haskell-src-exts includes GHC-specific extensions, why not round-trip via the GHC AST? That could also be used by other tools. --Nominolo

Part of the idea was to be more lightweight/modular than GHC, but it would still be a good way to test :) --benmachine 00:22, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

wxHaskell (Maciek Makowski)

System.Process: Provide a way to send arbitrary posix signals to a ProcessHandle. Matthiasg 20:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Have an option to avoid using package.cache, because it makes working with Open Embedded quite hard. Matthiasg 15:57, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Hackage 2 (Ben Millwood)

Data.Text (Jasper Van der Jeugt)

unordered-containers (Johan Tibell)

I probably deserve a real kicking for this, but: a TeX replacement. Specifically, embed TeX in Haskell so you can both parse down to its semantic layer and manipulate the semantic layer stuff (which is still pretty-printable back out to TeX as a bunch of primitives and not-so-primitives). Got a bunch of ideas for this, but it's mostly an itch I just got - am currently reading through the TeXbook to check I've understood how TeX itself works sufficiently though, and who doesn't want a backwards-compatible-including-extensions TeX replacement with better syntax, typechecking and the potential for better debugging? --PhilippaCowderoy 22:04, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Not going to be there, so unless anyone's feeling particularly brave I'm guessing this one's a goner.

8 Talks/demos

If you have a talk or demo you want to give, add your name to the list below. Let's restrict these to short slots (say 20 mins max). Tentatively we'll have a session of talks and demos on Saturday afternoon, but we can always move things around if necessary.